


I Have Compassion For People Who Follow the Rules

by ElijahDarling



Category: For the People (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM, BDSM Scene, Dominant Jay Simmons, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Good BDSM Etiquette, Introspection, Jay has a dog named Roast Beef, Jay is a professional Dom, Jay is a sweetheart, Kate is a Judge, Kinda, No Sex, POV Jay Simmons, Platonic BDSM, Spanking, Submissive Kate Littlejohn, they are both in their mid-fifties, this is way more Soft and touchy-feely than I expected it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 19:15:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17412650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElijahDarling/pseuds/ElijahDarling
Summary: "Kate Littlejohn can only let go in a trap of her own design."Kate employs Jay for a BDSM session. The first of many (hopefully).





	I Have Compassion For People Who Follow the Rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [litra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/gifts).



> This is an exploration of Jay and Kate's characters and their relationship in the context of meeting this way. It also dives deep into a lot of naval gazing about BDSM and dominance and submission in particular. You absolutely don't need to know For the People on ABC or either of these two characters to read this, but I do feel like I kept them in character. Litra was the one who first suggested Jay and Kate as a potential ship and at one point they were her OTP of the fandom. 
> 
> So, to my partner in crime and celebrating all the fucking things we've written in this fandom, here is the fic you told me at one point you wanted to read. 
> 
> Just seven more weeks until we are done with On Duty and can watch season two!

  
  


Kate Littlejohn can only let go in a trap of her own design.

 

This is something that becomes clear to Jay within a week of correspondence with her and only one in person interview.

 

That’s no problem for him; a common complaint he’d had from people accessing his services was that he was almost too easy-going in letting his clients set the pace. One young woman, initially shy and meek had lost her temper with him when he’d asked her if the temperature in the room was set warm enough for her. She’d yelled at him for not being more in command, for not  _ taking _ control, for not taking  _ her _ .

 

“I’m not that sort of Dom.” He remembers replying, gaze boring into hers, and feeling like he was pleading for understanding. “I’m not the person who is going to hurt you unless you ask me to.”

 

She’d stood him up for their next session, and the next. He’d welcomed her back eventually - where she tearfully confessed to him that she’d expected him to just know what she wanted and do it - that asking for things felt deeply humiliating in a way she hadn’t expected. They’d worked it out. Jay knows his patience and consideration - his solicitous manner in its entirety, really - are not what erotic novels would view as assets for a good Dom, but he’s not there to fulfill a fantasy. He’s there to provide a service. 

 

He has been aware for a while that a successful power exchange scene necessitates a ceding of power on both parties ends - and Kate seems to be on the same page in that.

 

Jay finds himself almost tantalizingly intimidated by her. Kate Littlejohn is an honest lawyer who went on to become an honest judge. She is exactly herself, through and through. She is herself with conviction. Jay envies that self-assurance. His own life had been characterized with doubt and questioning; exact definitions always slipping through his fingers until all that was left to be defined by was the exact circumstances and context of the moment. To know himself only where wheel met road, to know himself only as he knows himself with someone.

 

He is fluid where Kate is bedrock. Jay has been professionally Domming people for two decades - ever since he’d left his job in social work and advocacy at thirty five. Before working that, he’d been a part time bike messenger, a part time  masseur, and always he’d been a first born son helping his parents dry cleaning business. Kate had been a lawyer, had wanted to be part of making the world more just and fair, since before he’d steamed his first suit.

 

So when he asks her if she has any requests for their first session, the email that follows is full of details. From the type of bottled water she prefers, to the knots she’d like him to tie her in, and even (he smiles at this) the exact temperature she’d like the room to be. Kate reminds him of the need for discretion, and he reminds her that to all outside of word of mouth he appears to be an exclusive and private massage therapist. 

 

_ People won’t question a judge carrying some tension and needing a little stress relief _ , he’d written back. He didn’t write that he’d yet to meet one woman in her fifties that didn’t have some sort of physical therapy routine - it seemed uncouth. Especially as a man in his fifties who had finally conceded to seeking the help of a chiropractor to regularly pop his back and tend miscellaneous aches. Instead he’d added,  _ I can even offer you a massage afterward if you’d like. I do still have the training and license to do so. _

 

Kate had declined - she’d only have the fifty-five minutes to spare for the session proper with him and didn’t want to waste any time. He’d reminded her that he required a certain amount of that time for aftercare and that it may well end up that she only got forty-five minutes of play.

 

_ Acceptable.  _ He’d snorted a little at her one word email in return. Hell of a woman, he thought, scratching the head of his pitbull that he’d renamed Roast Beef because Killer simply didn’t suit the poor dear’s disposition and absolute conviction to get every piece of roast beef she could down her throat the second he turned his back when putting away groceries.

 

When the day comes for their first session, The Honorable Judge Kate Littlejohn comes to his office in a woman’s tailored suit and sedate black flats and he finds himself actually a little bit nervous.  _ She makes me feel like an untried boy just by existing near her _ , Jay realizes and finds himself fondly humbled.  _ God help me if I had met when when I was a young man. She’d have eaten me alive. _

 

“Please take off your shoes. You are 15 seconds late and we will be addressing that.” He puts on his best Authority Figure that is Loving but Displeased With Your Conduct face. It is the expression that looks most like his father’s from when he was a teenager. Kate had specifically requested the he be strict and exact in his conduct in the play session with her.

 

She’d also requested that he be a touch unfair in his rulings.

 

_ I’ve found _ , she’d shared,  _ that the best sessions I’ve had in the past are when my Dom or Domme sets themselves as my adversary. The most satisfactory releases I get are pitting myself against unwinnable situations. I enjoy the mutual struggle, and the slow compromise. _

 

When she looks up at him after toeing off her shoes with a light burning in her eyes that makes her face transform from exhausted and lined with worries to one of a fiery determination, he can see why she chose this role for him. He almost has a lump in his throat taking in the defiance of her, and the clear grit that made her who she is.

 

_ Who am I in the circumstances of existing next to you?  _ He wonders. His expression not reflecting this ponderance - still poker faced and severe to her eyes.

 

Jay has her take off her clothes, telling her a winding story of growing up in a house that expected perfection in their dealings with garments - his parents business was about presentation and the press - upon saying this word he’d come up behind her and gently, unrelentingly, pushed her firmly against the wall with his left hand. 

 

“We’d press the suits just so.” He’d smoothed his right hand over her ass. “Are you ready to address the 15 seconds you kept me waiting now?”

 

“I was not 15 seconds late.” Her voice is clear, not muffled by her cheek being lodged into the wall. He admires her class. He reprimands her for not calling him sir, and invites her to try again.

 

“I was not 15 seconds late, sir.” He pinches her, holds the flesh firmly to the count of ten. Let’s go.

 

“Are you ready to take your punishment for the 15 seconds you kept me waiting?”

 

Her body is heated under his hands. He can see the blush of her anger on her back.

 

“I have earned no such punishment, sir. I was not 15 seconds late, sir.”

 

“It’s time to accept your punishment, girl. Don’t keep me waiting on this as well. It will end badly for you.”

 

He watches her tense and consider this statement. Her pinkie is tapping the wall softly as she contemplates her options. He has been rubbing her ass firmly and almost clinically through all of this; working her up for what’s coming and preparing her body for the assault she’s about to endure. For Jay, prepping is absolute and important - especially for the clients that are disinterested in aftercare.

 

Kate coils tightly, sucks in a lungful of breath and then slowly exhales, letting herself uncoil as she does.

 

“Please, sir, can you tell me how you will punish me?”

 

“I think fifteen smacks to this tardy ass should satisfy me.”

 

Slow inhale. Slow exhale.

 

“Sir. May I request ten instead?”

 

“I should add three for you daring to ask that.”

 

“I… apologize, sir. May I have ten and I will go on my knees for you after?”

 

Jay kisses the cheek that’s turned toward him, unable to help the slight smile. “What a good girl you’re trying to be. Yes, I think you on your knees will be just what is needed. Now brace yourself, you’ll have thirteen smacks for being late.”

 

“Thirteen? Sir.” Jay can hear her practically hissing that. Her teeth must be clenched.

 

“The ten you offered, and three more for offering. Just as I promised. Now. Count them out for me.”

 

His hand comes down hard on her ass, sounding a sharp clap that drowns out her growl of frustration.

 

“You,” he whispers to her, her keen eye - big and almost doe-like in pain - regarding him and refusing to shy away. “Will be a work of art when I am done. Maybe I’ll hang you on the wall and make a display of you. Would you like that?” He spanks her again and again as he asks.

 

“Two, sir. Three, sir.” She does not answer him. She counts. Kate Littlejohn is no dummy.

 

He spanks her again. 

 

“Four, sir.” 

 

_ Standing next to you, who am I in this context?  _ He thinks.

 

“Five, sir.” Slow inhale. Hissed exhale. She is almost near panting. She is going to make him earn it.

 

He can’t help but feel like before they are done here, he is the one that will walk away aching.

 

“Six, sir.”

 

_ And many more to come before we are through.  _ He is looking forward to any and all of it.

 

“Seven, sir.”

 

_ I prefer structure. If you are going to do something, I would like you to do it exactly as you say. I am not a fan of surprises; good or bad. I like to know what’s coming to me. I also would ask that you keep the room warm: at least seventy-five degrees fahrenheit. I run cold.  _ He recalls reading all this.

 

Jay thinks that she’s damn near the hottest client he’s ever taken on. He can feel the heat of her radiating out a hair’s breadth from touching her again for another smack.

 

“Eight, sir.”

 

He finds himself rising as he feels her start to submerge. 

 

He loves when his nerves and concerns fall away and he becomes exactly who he is in this moment, a man giving someone exactly what they need to trust and fall away from their own obligations and daily stress. He’s never experienced being so in sync with someone before; feeling almost like they are passing each other going different directions, but striving for much of the same thing. Just getting that need and desire answered in different ways. 

 

This demands a mutual surrender. That is what they have asked of each other. That is who they are in this too warm room together. He lets Jay, the man he is in his day to day, go, and becomes the Sir she needs to let The Honorable Kate Littlejohn go, and just exist in her body as it is right now. With no thought toward the past or future, only a hand holding her, and a hand touching her, and her voice raspy and vaguely stunned saying:

 

“Nine, sir.

 

“Ten, sir.

 

“Eleven, sir.

 

“Twelve, sir.

 

“Thirteen, sir.”

 

“Very, very good. Now, on your knees.”

 

When she looks up at him from where she kneels, he thinks that someday he’ll have to introduce her to Roast Beef. It’s a presumptuous thought. He doesn’t even know if she’ll become a regular client, let alone one that would be comfortable for him to introduce his dog to. But she looks like a woman that would benefit from the particular aftercare that Roast Beef brings to some of his favorite clients. When the heavy, scarred little beast pretends to be a lap puppy and drapes herself over people he’d just had suspended and begs for scratches and attention - well, there’s something magical about watching them come back to themselves snug in a robe with an armful of loving animal and tea steaming from a mug waiting for consumption.

 

Kate looks like a woman that would benefit from some loving. He’d like to do that for her, in whatever capacity she’d allow.

 

_ Who exactly is on their knees here?  _

 

_ “I like to know what’s coming to me.” _

 

“Close your eyes. Hold still. I want to appreciate what a pretty little picture you make.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Good girl.”

 

_ I could fall for her. _ A different way of being eaten alive than he predicted if his younger self had met her younger self, but he wouldn’t mind being that in the context of the two of them.

 

“ _ The most satisfactory releases I get are pitting myself against unwinnable situations. I enjoy the mutual struggle, and the slow compromise.” _

 

He watches her breathe. Slow inhale. Slow exhale. Content to kneel and wait now that’s he’s tenderized her so deftly.

 

Jay wonders what it’s like to be at her mercy. He’d like to find out.

 

He’d like to earn it.


End file.
